Advertising on the weekend is most effective

Consumers are 7 per cent more likely to click on a display ad during the weekend, says Adform’s Quarterly Media Barometer.

Surprisingly, the average cost for online advertising at the weekend was found to be lowest, around 12 per cent lower than during the week.

The recent findings also revealed that brands raised their real-time bidding (RTB) advertising spend by 92 per cent through the summer. This is despite the rising costs from publishers, who saw their CPMs increased by 30 per cent across the quarter. The figures also show that consumers spent longer engaging with online advertising during the summer, with engagement rates up by 14 per cent and the average engagement time an impressive 12 seconds.

Mobile display advertising spend fails to match industry hype

The growth in smartphone and tablet sales in recent years has meant the online ad industry has been abuzz with talk of mobile ads. For an increasing number of people, mobile has also become the primary way to access the Internet. However, despite a 67 per cent increase in RTB mobile ad spend over the summer, mobile spend is still not living up to industry hype, only accounting for 5 per cent of the overall digital marketing spend.

Martin Stockfleth Larsen, CMO at Adform commented, “Our latest report shows that the online advertising industry is in rude health and that real-time-bidding as a means for purchasing digital inventory continues to grow. While mobile is still trailing its desktop counterparts, overall RTB continues to represent the media plan of the future, allowing marketers to run more effective, cost effective and targeted campaigns.”

Larsen added, “As brand managers increasingly look to RTB as a way to reach consumers in the digital universe, brand metrics such as engagement time, engagement rate, video play time and viewability will supersede click through rates. However, the challenge for advertisers remains dealing with the sheer number of different suppliers, which can be costly, inefficient, and difficult to get one’s head round. One platform that can deliver all the above features is surely a cleaner and more effective method for advertisers to access the many innovations the online advertising industry is producing today.”